The Sufferers
by Adins
Summary: The Shitennou are pulled from their eternal repose to find the world in ruins. With no other options they set off to find their Master while trying desperately to survive and stay one step ahead of the ravenous, all-consuming hunger of the Sufferers...
1. Prologue

**The Sufferers  
**

By Adins

Image a place of perfect contentment: A sprawling field of emerald green on the edge of a forest that stretches on as far as the eye can see to the foot of snow-capped mountains reaching high into the clear blue sky. Imagine a place where men want for no earthly desires, where needs are provided for, and where poverty, sickness and war have no definition. This is where, until recently, I dwelt. I was free of the pain, guilt, suffering, and sorrow I had so long endured. Here in this place called Elysion I was finally at _peace_.

In long ages past I was one of the Shitennou. I hazard to guess that no one living this dark time knows the word. In short, I was a guardian. I pledged my life to defend and honor my Master, a man who did not simply lead peoples and nations, but the very Earth itself. There were four Shitennou, each called from one of the four corners of the earth; as powerful as the four winds, as unchanging as the four elements, and, as fate would have it, as destructive as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Now there is but one Shitennou left, me, and I wander a broken world alone. For what I did I can think of no better punishment.

We betrayed our Master in the distant past and the Earth was savaged by war and wiped clean of life. It was an unforgivable act, but by some miracle we were brought back from the brink of death and lived again. We sought him out, our noble Master, hoping to right what we had wronged, but our past sins had bound us to the darkness and we were ensnared once more. Again, in the service of a wicked Queen, we brought this world which we were sworn to protect to the edge of ruin. Even after we passed out of life for a second time the spirits of the Shitennou would not quietly fade. We searched for our Master through energy and thought until we found him at last. With our bodies reduced to mere stones and our souls longing for release we were allowed to return to the world we once fought so gallantly to protect: Elysion.

He would call on us for counsel and the Shitennou would appear. When the Silence threatened the world we offered our advice. When our Master took ill in a battle against creatures who harvested dreams we watched over him. When his star seed was plucked from his body and our Master died, the Shitennou offered our lives in exchange. We did not deserve the peace of Elysion. Had we not betrayed our world and damned ourselves to live our endless days trapped within mere rocks we could have protected our Master! Even when Sailor Moon saved the world and our triumphantly revived Master wed his ancient Princess we could not find solace. The Shitennou deserved no love or to join the rest of the world in jubilation. For our sins we should have been cast off into cold darkness forever.

That is exactly where I find myself now.

I cannot say what day it is. Clocks stopped working the moment the darkness fell. Electricity evaporated as though it were water in a desert. We heard our Master call from beyond the borders of the dream in which Elysion thrived. An earthquake had struck. The sky was red and black spires of lightning rained down en masse. We saw our Master's hand outstretched towards us and we could hear his cries, but we could not act or answer. We were falling; falling away from him, falling down. Four stones glittered brightly in the unnatural storm, tumbling through the sky. The apartment building split in half and crumbled. A thunderous explosion ripped through the air between us and the four stones were scattered. I saw my companions fly away and fade into the hellish night. I lost myself and when I awoke I felt cold. I had not felt _anything _in many years. To my utter shock and immediate horror I found myself alive, not simply existing as consciousness and thought, but truly alive, naked, and cold.

Something had happened to the Earth, something beyond terrible and difficult to describe. The cloudy sky above did not disperse even after days of my aimless wandering. Thunder constantly pealed in the distance, yet lightning never struck and rain never fell. The city was crumbling all around me. Buildings had collapsed or were in the process. Streets were littered with shells of rusting vehicles, papers, and the detritus of a missing civilization. A cold wind whistled through the dead streets and no matter where I tried to hide or find shelter it was always bitterly cold.

Weeks passed, perhaps months and still I wandered. I found my way to the edge of the sea and contemplated throwing myself into the frigid ocean, but still I stubbornly survived. I lived on scraps of food that I found only after rigorous searching. Sometimes I would swallow a handful of dead, dry leaves or eat a page out of a discarded magazine just to fill the void in my stomach. I tried to fish in the ocean, but after days of effort I succumbed to failure. In this personal hell it seemed not even house-flies survived whatever tragedy befell the planet.

But something did survive…

It wasn't long after I first spotted one that I began seeing many more. I tried my best to stay downwind and keep a low profile, but the deeper I went into the city the more plentiful they became. If I tried to retreat back the way I came they seemed to close in behind me. They were everywhere! I thought my own torment of isolation, starvation, and the lingering guilt of my betrayals set me upon a pedestal of woe, but these poor creatures were true lost souls where mine was simply unclean. I pitied them, I cried for them, and I killed them without mercy or hesitation. They were the unfortunate who did not survive the devastation of the world. With the Earth dying they hungered for any and all life.

The Sufferers.


	2. Chapter 2

**CHAPTER ONE**

Jadeite was lost… in more ways than one.

He stood at a crossroads where weather and the decay of time had worn the lettering on the street signs to unintelligible smears. His sense of direction was long gone and he was beginning to suffer from the effects of claustrophobia. The twisted towering spires of concrete and steel that once comprised a section of downtown Tokyo looked ready to topple inward and bury him alive. There had been no color beyond drab gray for his eyes to devour in days. Clouds drifted above, churning and broiling as if threatening a storm, but one never came.

The wind whipped past him in a howling gust disturbing the papers that littered the ground like a fine fallen snow. He reached up to shield himself, but as always the wind assaulted him with bits of a ruined city. After working yet another speck of grime from his eye he set off again. His normally well-kept blonde curls were scraggly and stiff from weeks of neglect. His beard was full. His eyes, steely and determined as they had always been, were nevertheless sunken and weary from malnutrition and untold restless hours of wandering.

It had been so long since he walked Tokyo's streets during his tenure in the Dark Kingdom that nothing looked familiar. He seemed to be in a commercial district. There were many billboards and posters advertising a multitude of flippant products all of which appealed to him immensely within the context of this catastrophic predicament in which he found himself. There were boutiques lining the sidewalks, all of which had their windows and doors smashed in and their contents looted.

_Looted._ He would often think. _That assumes people survived beyond the initial disaster… so where are they now?_

His stomach rumbled fiercely and the Shitennou staggered up against a pole to steady himself. Pangs of hunger were a fairly new sensation after existing in a non-corporeal form for many years, but these spasms were positively debilitating. Food was so scarce that the young man (physically, but by no means mentally or spiritually) was often reduced to tiding himself on bits of leather and rancid, standing water from puddles between his meager scavenged meals. The mere thought of food excited his stomach again and the undulating spasm forced him to a nearby bench. He was panting hard from the pain and sweat beaded on his brow. He flung down his pack and tore it open.

Jadeite had scavenged a sleeping bag one of the first nights awoke in this strange, dilapidated city. He began collecting bits of clothing as he traveled: a pair of socks and black shoes from a dumpster, jeans a size too large from a mannequin that had escaped the looters, a belt made of rope, and a large overcoat cobbled together from tarps, torn curtains, and vehicle upholstery. Many times he had considered searching the larger high-rise towers for more functional equipment, but decided against it fearing becoming lost or trapped within the dead buildings, owing nothing to the fact that many of them appeared near collapse.

The backpack he had found discarded in an overgrown park held his other wares: several bottles for water when he came across a clean source, bags to isolate food if he found any, a sturdy hand axe, a butcher's knife, and a .357 magnum revolver with about twenty cartridges. The gun he had found locked in a safe of a small convenience store, a safe that showed evidence of trying to be broken without success. Jadeite worked the lock with his bare hands and barrel of a stainless steel pen for a week before finally opening it. Along with the weapon he found several shrink-wrapped bricks of a powdery white substance, a small black book of names and phone numbers, several small bags of various pharmaceuticals, and over a million yen which now seemed largely useless, but he took it anyway.

The white substance he identified as cocaine, a somewhat popular illicit drug. He kept it with him assuming that if he encountered anyone in the ruined city that he may be able to barter it for other supplies. He had no idea what the pills were, but he discovered the small blue ones relaxed him significantly and eased the aching of his empty stomach. He carefully divided up the blue pills from the rest and began rationing them daily. There were a few hundred, being barely larger than the tip of a ballpoint pen. He started consuming one or two every few days when the hunger pains became intolerable, but now found himself popping a few every day, sometimes in the span of several hours.

As he swallowed the pills with the tiniest sip of water he continued rooting around until he came upon a wad of tin foil. Wrapped up in it was a hunk of stale bread about the size of his fist. Also he found a small pack of ketchup. He bit off an inch-wide section of bread and tore the packet of ketchup with his teeth, sucking it out with a grimace. He was in no position to be picky with what he consumed, but if he were in any other situation he wouldn't have touched the stuff. Of the few things he could remember eating in his life nothing turned his stomach quite as much as ketchup. Sweet, sludgy, and disgusting… He took another small bite of his heel of bread and thought back to a time before this chaos.

It was the compassion of Master Endymion that spared Jadeite and his fellow Shitennou from an eternity of silent, empty blackness. They had helped to save him from the wrath of Queen Metalia, but when he and the Senshi were reborn the Shitennou lingered behind in their spectral state. Mamoru would call on them in times of need, but they remained incorporeal. After some time Helios finally appeared, revealed the Golden Crystal to Mamoru, and the Golden Kingdom of Elysion flourished once more. Out of the endless kindness of his heart Mamoru released the souls of the Shitennou into Elysion, still only shadows of their former selves, but able to roam the dream of Elysion forever.

Or at least until the darkness overtook the Earth again. Jadeite cringed at the thought. He could still remember his Master's call on that fateful night. The Shitennou were roused from their eternal slumber as they had been in their Master's times of need before, but this time was different. He was not calling on them for aid, he was calling out to warn them; to _save_ them! Their precious stones were still held within a box near Mamoru's bed and as the building split in two the box fell. The stones glittered against the flames and lightning of that horrid night, then all at once they were split apart by a crack of energy that sent the four stones sailing in opposite directions.

He had awoken in a tangle of concrete, glass, and steel. A building had collapsed around him and Jadeite struggled to free himself for what seemed like days. Sheer willpower was the only thing that kept him alive in those desperate days upon his waking to new life. His body ached from hunger and fatigue. He clothed himself in rags; his mind swam with dreadful emotions from guilt and anger to depression and despair. All around him the ruined city began to seem more and more like a towering mausoleum. It was some time before the young Shitennou could decide if he were truly alive or dead. The realization came when he met one of the Sufferers.

It was scarcely a month ago, but it seemed so much longer now. An empty, chilly alley that served as Jadeite's makeshift shelter was where he found her. It was a child dressed in tattered, soiled garments resembling a school uniform. Her nails had grown long like claws. Her eyes were black through and through, cheekbones protruded through her emaciated face. Her jaw was wide open, hanging motionless, and her teeth were stained brown and peppered with bits of viscera and desiccated flesh. On her forehead was a black stain in the shape of an inverted crescent moon. The little girl stalked towards Jadeite with a lumbering gait, wheezing as she moved.

"Hello?" Jadeite had called to her. The girl was silent.

"Where did you come from?" No reply.

"Can you understand me?" She lunged for his throat.

Jadeite had to stagger backward to avoid her. Her claw-like hands sought out his fragile flesh and three parallel wounds sliced open on his forearm. The girl's eyes began to glow with a hateful amber flame. Her black, cavernous mouth seemed to pull inward like a cyclone. Jadeite felt his strength falter. Wispy blue trails of smoke left his body, sucked into the vacuum of the ravenous girl's mouth. She was feeding off his energy! Jadeite's hand grasped the closest thing he could find: a cinderblock. He flung it end-over end and the heavy concrete smashed the girl's skull. She staggered for a moment, a horrible sound gurgled up from her ruined face. She fell backward into a wall and slid to a seated position leaving a horrific trail of gore behind her.

Jadeite stood in shock for a moment regarding the corpse of the child who could only have been seven or eight years old. His strength returned slowly as the dead eyes stared back at him. He bound the wound on his arm, but it would pain him for days as it slowly healed. Several hours after that first encounter he carried the girl's body to a nearby park and laid it in a shallow grave he dug with a sharp rock. He stood here staring into the brackish, dead lake for a long while contemplating.

_Alive again after all this time. _He thought to himself. _Just a few days and I am already a murderer._

If his first encounter was a wake-up call that dangers still lurked in this dead city then his second encounter was a race for survival against a supernatural predator. It was only two days later that Jadeite found himself inside a supermarket. The shelves had been picked clean, but in the back he found a large walk-in cooler, still barely running on a backup generator. The door had been damaged by falling masonry and was sealed shut. He called for his powers, those super-human strengths than only Senshi and Shitennou were born with. He released his energy into his muscles and tore the door from its hinges. He had just finished loading as much of the frozen food as he could into a sack when he heard them.

Outisde the supermarket he heard claws against the boarded-up windows and doors. Groans and cries from beyond the walls stood his hair on end. More shambling bodies appeared at the back entrance to the store. He was completely surrounded by what seemed to be mindless, lumbering parasites. He could only assume they were attracted by his energy expenditure and he cursed his foolishness after witnessing the first girl drain his life force away so easily. These creatures, whatever they were, obviously sustained themselves on such energies. He resolved never again to call on his Shitennou powers, at least until some sense could be made of his situation.

Jadeite was forced into the heating and cooling ducts that lined the ceiling of the store. He followed the dusty, gritty pipes to a vertical shaft that terminated on the roof. Two stories below him he saw the mob of Sufferers that had surrounded the building; dozens on both sides, clawing at the walls to get inside and eviscerate him. His body shuddered involuntarily and he began running across the low rooftops of the neighborhood. The Sufferers followed. They shambled along with a peculiar gait and Jadeite knew they would never catch him at speed, but they were persistent. They followed at his heels for hours. When he was forced to sprint as fast as he could carry himself to maintain distance they continued after him, appearing again the following morning. He ran and ran for days, but the slathering mass of ghouls would not let up.

He was saved only by a crumbling bridge over a river that collapsed behind him as he leapt across. The Sufferers that tried to follow were caught up in the swift current of the black water; the rest stayed their ground on the opposite bank as Jadeite continued on deeper into the city. He did not stop running until he stumbled and could no longer find the strength to pick himself up. It was after that encounter that he resolved to better clothe himself, to find better food and equipment, and to _survive_.

Jadeite's thoughts brought him to the present; back to that depressing gray city, his moldy bread and a packet of ketchup. He finished off his meal with another small sip of water and got up to leave, slinging his pack over his shoulder again.

_CLANG!_

The Shitennou froze stiff where he stood. The pack slid off to the ground and his hands worked feverishly. The revolver was cocked and aimed in seconds. He was not skillful with firearms, having relied on his own mystical powers over nature for many thousands of years, but he was a quick study. Jadeite was not trained in a lofty tower or drilled in barracks to survive, it was a natural tendency. He would not submit to this hellish world, no matter what it threw at him.

_CLANG!_

He placed the sound at several hundred yards away, but in the empty, cavernous streets of the city the sound carried and echoed at full volume. Whatever it was, it was not in his immediate vicinity. He relaxed slightly and eased the hammer back on his weapon.

_CLANG!_

He shouldered his salvaged gear and began marching down the deserted street again, trying to keep the mysterious sound in front of him, but off to one side. The last thing he needed was to run smack into the middle of another horde of Sufferers.

_CLANG!_

The sound was surprisingly regular. It was metallic-sounding, perhaps a steel cable of some sort hitting up against an empty tank or dumpster. For lack of other amusement and open to anything that would stave off his boredom Jadeite began to count.

_CLANG!_

… _two … three … four …_

_CLANG!_

… _two … three … four …_

_CLANG!_

He halted in his tracks again. The sound was far too regular. It was holding a steady beat. Whatever it was, it wasn't natural. His thoughts drifted, trying to place the noise, but came up empty. He immediately considered that it could be some sort of machinery still operating after the rest of the city had shut down. That alone regardless of what it might be warranted investigation. He cocked his revolver again and quickened his pace, keeping one shoulder practically brushing against the sides of the buildings he passed, pausing only at intersections to cautiously peer around corners.

_CLANG!_

He was getting closer! The sound was ringing loudly now; so loud in fact that it almost hurt his ears. He was entering a clearing. It was a large intersection that split the main road into a fork. A large concrete dais stood at the center where a traffic light was once propped up. Jadeite halted in view of the intersection and pressed himself into an alcove between two buildings. He craned his neck around the corner to see an unhappy sight.

A mob of Sufferers was shambling towards the intersection, possibly drawn by the sound. There looked to be a dozen of them. Across the way he could see a second mob approaching from the other end of the fork, about the same number. He rolled his eyes at the absurdity. It was likely that he could dispatch them all with his revolver before they could reach him and begin sucking away his energy, but it would use up all of his ammunition and Jadeite was not a man to work himself into a corner unless the situation was desperate enough to call for a last stand. He was not that desperate yet; in fact he was the epitome of composure and grace under fire.

_CLANG!_

The heavy wheezing of the Sufferers was so near that the metallic carillon call was muffled. He still could not see the source, but he knew it was coming from the far side of the concrete median behind which he could not see. The two mobs of ghouls converged and shambled their way towards the center and towards the noise. Jadeite's grip on his weapon tightened as he tried desperately to meld his body into the concrete that shielded him.

_CLANG!_

The final noise was followed by a crowbar flying through the air. It spun end-over-end and impaled one of the Suffers between the eyes. The rest of the horde was unmoved, but the sound stopped. In the gloom of the city he saw a figure leap onto the concrete median. This new shape moved with agility and speed, not the slow, slogging gait of the Sufferers. Jadeite could see no weapons, but his eyes were blocked by hanging power lines, dim light, and the sea of ghouls in front of him. He wanted to call out and warn this strange newcomer of the danger, but self-preservation took over. Then, he heard something that shook him completely.

"Suf-fer-ers!" The figure cried out in a plaintive, sing-song voice, "Come out to play-ay!"

The man let out a peal of laughter that was shrill, chittering, and decidedly unstable. At once the center of the intersection lit up as a wave of psychic force washed through the pack of Sufferers and struck Jadeite as well pressing him up firmly against the building he was hiding near. His mouth was open, his eyes wide. He wanted to gasp or cry out, but couldn't find the air.

_I'd know that laugh anywhere!_ He thought to himself, joy suddenly replacing dread. _Zoisite!_

He forced his eyes to focus and he saw the whirl of Zoisite's copper hair, knowing at once that it was indeed one of his long-lost Shitennou brothers. The Sufferers were set upon him at once, but Zoisite's teeth were bared and his eyes were lost in a sea of rage. Petals of sakura, energized and sharp as razors flew freely from Zoisite's fingertips, lacerating the slavering horde and severing heads as they flew. One came too close, grabbed at the Shitennou's coat sleeve and was rewarded for its effort by the back of Zoisite's boot connected with its head. The wild Shitennou cast his sakura in a wide arc all around him, felling the horde in moments. With a terribly cry he reached up to the sky and keen-edged daggers of pure ice appeared. He flung them with merciless speed at the Sufferers and they fell where they stood.

Jadeite's sudden elation was cast off soon as he saw yet another huge horde of the energy-sucking parasites approaching Zoisite from behind. The Shitennou was surrounded. His sakura were losing their potency. Jadeite saw the fatigue in his companion's face. He was now defending himself with his limbs. The Sufferers were overtaking him! With a final surge of power Zoisite loosed a second wave of psychic energy that pushed the horde back and away from him. He fell to his knees and the relentless horde pressed in on him again. He heard the raving Shitennou laugh in that cackling, unhinged way again. Zoisite picked up a sword off the ground that looked to be made from a golf club handle and a lawnmower blade.

"Come on, you bastards!" Zoisite cried at the top of his voice, "I'm not done with you yet!"

He struck the first ghoul that got too near, slicing it across the belly and then following through with a second swipe to sever the head. Several more were dispatched this way. Zoisite retreated, climbing over piling dead bodies to higher ground. He struck down with his makeshift sword again and it became embedded in the skull of one of the Sufferers. He tried to dislodge it using his foot for leverage against the peeling, rotting head, but the blade was stuck fast. He had no defense and nowhere to escape. He did what he could and laughed. He laughed like a lunatic; a raving madman. Beneath the peals of screeching exuberance Jadeite heard the same pain and fatigue he felt in his heart every day. The young Shitennou could wait no longer.

He kicked himself into the air off the top of a hand railing and aimed his gun. Six shots rang out in sequence. Six bullets flew through the air following impossible paths. Six of the Sufferers attacking Zoisite fell dead. Jadeite broke his rule against using his Shitennou powers and lifted the crazed Zoisite onto his shoulder and leaped to the top of a building some hundred feet above him. The Sufferers below groaned, grunted, and shambled. Jadeite could have screamed bloody murder.

"God damn it!" Zoisite shouted and threw himself off Jadeite's shoulders unexpectedly, "No! God damn it, no! Get off me!"

He stalked to the edge of the building to see the horde below. Zoisite stretched out his arms at his sides, put his foot on the edge of the roof and fell forward. Jadeite had only seconds to react and he had to leap to catch his crazed comrade. He grabbed Zoisite by one ankle. Jadeite himself slid up against the roof and he heard the snap of one of his ribs breaking against the strain. Pain shot through him. His grip faltered, but he would not let go.

"Let go of me!" Zoisite roared in blind fury, "Let the fuck go!"

"I'm not letting you go, Zoisite!" Jadeite called down to him, "Now swing yourself up here and give me your hand!"

"I don't want your help! I don't need your help!" Zoisite raved, clueless as to his savior, "I'm supposed to be down there! Just let me go!"

"You're not going to kill yourself!" Jadeite screamed back at him.

Zoisite struggled, twisted, pulled, and did just about everything else he could think of to loosen Jadeite's grip, but nothing worked. He bellowed as loud as he could. The Sufferers below answered the call with their droning moan, but in the end Zoisite was powerless. Tears ran freely up through his eyebrows and onto his forehead, falling a hundred feet down to the ravenous horde below.

"Just let me die…" he cried pathetically.

"It would be like you to get as many of them as you could in one place." Jadeite said with a smirk, desperately trying to hold onto his suicidal friend, "Go out in a blaze of glory."

"Please…" Zoisite cried again.

"What would our Master think if he saw you like this?" Jadeite asked, hoping to reach the one thing that Zoisite would recognize through any delirium.

It worked. "What?" the second Shitennou asked.

"Master Endymion would not be pleased to see you acting this way, Zoisite." Jadeite struggled, "And frankly, I don't think it's at all becoming for any Shitennou to want to kill themselves."

Zoisite looked up. His eyes connected for the first time. He was as speechless as his rescuer had been only moments ago.

"Jadeite!" He gasped in joyous recognition.

"God damn it, Zoisite." Jadeite demanded with a grimace, "Give me your hand."

He finally obliged. Zoisite swung himself upright and clamped onto Jadeite's forearm. He hauled his long-lost companion over the side of the roof and they both collapsed on the cold concrete, panting rhythmically. When their heart rates dropped to an acceptable level and they could both breathe freely again they sat up and started at each other, each regarding the other person with a mixture of relief and suspicion.

"Jadeite." Zoisite said with an air of disbelief.

"Zoisite." Jadeite answered.

"I—" Zosite started to speak, but had nothing to say.

"It's good to see you." Jadeite admitted and for the first time in months, possibly years, he smiled.


	3. Chapter 3

**CHAPTER TWO**

It had been so long since Jadeite ate anything resembling real food that he nearly threw up after tearing through a small bag of potato chips Zoisite had given him. For his apparently unhinged behavior and recent brush with suicide Zoisite was very well provisioned. He wore jeans like Jadeite and a white collared shirt, but unlike Jadeite's tattered piecemeal overcoat Zoisite wore a tight black leather jacket. His long curled hair was tied back with what appeared to be an actual hair band. Jadeite couldn't help but laugh. Even during this apparent apocalypse Zoisite would have to look his best…

"I happened to come to inside a mall." Zoisite explained as he reached deep into a bag of pretzels to fish out every last crumb, "Half of it was a burned-out, ruined mess, but the other half had been blocked off by a partial collapse. I was lucky."

"I wasn't." Jadeite said ruefully, "I woke up buried alive halfway to Yokohama."

"That's close to where the outbreak started." Zoisite recalled and shook his head, "It's a wonder you were able to find anything to survive off of at all. The government practically firebombed the place."

"The government?" Jadeite gasped, "What do you mean?"

"After the initial attack." Zoisite said as though Jadeite should understand what he was talking about, "The Sufferers began to appear just afterward. The whole island was in a state of panic, most buildings were compromised, half of Japan was on fire. The government tried to contain the outbreak at first, but then just decided to purge it."

"How do you know that?" Jadeite asked completely stunned by the information.

"Don't you ever read the papers that are littered all over the streets?" Zoisite asked in all seriousness.

Jadeite lowered his gaze and looked both embarrassed and offended. "I suppose it never occurred to me." He looked back up at Zoisite, "Or it did, and I just decided against it."

"Because you were afraid of what you might learn?" Zoisite asked knowingly, "I felt that way too. Some of the newspapers were nothing but obituaries. I tried to stop myself from reading through them because I knew one day I might see—"

Zoisite's words trailed off. Jadeite finished for him: "Chiba Mamoru."

His companion's silence was all the affirmation he needed. Jadeite stood up clutching his side painfully. He had definitely wounded himself when he saved Zoisite from his dramatic fall off the building. One of his ribs was either cracked or seriously bruised. He was having some difficulty taking deep breaths, but so far it was more of an uncomfortable inconvenience than anything. He moved to the edge of the building and looked down.

The streets below were still festering with the ghoulish husks of what remained of this city's inhabitants. The Sufferers clawed at the doors and windows of the buildings and repeatedly shoved themselves against the hard concrete, but to no avail. It seemed these simple, primal creatures were only capable of basic motor skills. He hadn't even seen one of them able to climb a flight of stairs let alone ascend a dozen stories to the roof where the two Shitennou were holed up. Still, their supplies wouldn't last more than a few days and Jadeite had no intention of giving up so easily. There was a fire escape on the opposite side of the building which offered their best chance of escape, but it looked rickety and half-broken. Hopefully a safer option would present itself, but Jadeite knew it was a far-off possibility.

He scanned the city as far as he could see but saw only gray clouds and crumbling buildings. At this point trying to set a path was pointless. It might behoove them to get out of the city altogether, but with so little information to go on the suburbs and countryside beyond Tokyo may not offer them any better chance of survival than the urban center. He turned back to Zoisite with a blank expression.

"Quite some time since I've seen that look." Zoisite reminisced with as much humor as he could muster, which was practically none, "You plan on doing something stupid and reckless, don't you?"

"We can't stay here forever." Jadeite informed his companion, "We're going to need to move."

"Why?" Zoisite asked dismissively, "I like it here just fine."

"I found you, Zoisite." The blonde Shitennou reminded him, "If we're both still alive that means there's a good chance the others are as well."

"That should interest me why?" Zoisite asked petulantly.

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that." Jadeite scorned his younger counterpart.

"Jadeite, to be perfectly honest I've haven't decided whether or not you're even real, so you'll forgive me if I'm skeptical about striking out into the city again to look for our dearly departed brethren." Zoisite declared crossly.

Jadeite was starting to get impatient. He walked over to Zoisite, crouched down by his side and grabbed the younger man's arm. He twisted a fold of his skin between his thumb and forefinger as hard as he could.

"OUCH!" Zoisite cried out and pulled away to nurse his already black-and-blue bruise. The Sufferers below groaned in response, "What the hell was that for?"

"To prove a point." Jadeite returned and stood up, "I'm real. Why do you think you're still alive?"

Zoisite didn't answer. He continued absentmindedly rubbing his arm and staring off into the gray distance. Jadeite shook his head and chuckled to himself. Some things never changed. Even in the face of soulless, energy-sucking ghouls in a ruined city with little or no chance for survival Zoisite could still act like a spoiled brat. Jadeite walked to the other side of their small camp and dug in his backpack for a moment and pulled out his .357 magnum and a few extra shells.

"What are you doing?" Zoisite asked curiously.

"I'm going to have a look around this building." Jadeite answered, "Hopefully we can find something to help get us out of here."

"We could just jump." Zoisite suggested as he looked over the side.

"Very funny." Jadeite replied without humor.

"We would survive it, Jadeite." Zoisite reminded him, "I wasn't jumping off the roof to kill myself, you know. Not the fall, anyway…"

"We can't call on our powers at all, Zoi." Jadeite told his de-facto partner, "That type of energy expenditure attracts those creatures like a moth to flame."

"So what are we going to do if we make it off this roof?" Zoisite asked stubbornly, "We're just going to end up running again. Those things never let up after they catch your scent. They'll follow us to the ends of the earth."

"Then we'll go to the ends of the earth." Jadeite replied just as stubbornly, "Look, until yesterday I thought I was the last living thing on this planet, then I saw you just about ready to throw your life away. It's no coincidence that two of us are still here, Zoisite. I know the others are out there somewhere."

"What if they are?" Zoisite continued his negative position, "What if the Four Kings get back together just like the olden days? That just means there are four people trying to survive off the same limited resources."

"Strength in numbers." Jadeite dismissed the baseless nay-saying.

"You are really set on this, aren't you?" Zoisite laughed outwardly at him, "Leave it to you to keep acting loyal and upright while the whole damn shit storm falls down around us."

"Then act like the Shitennou you're supposed to be!" Jadeite barked down at Zoisite who seemed to shrink under his anger, "We were sworn to protect this world, Zoisite, and right now it looks like the world damn well needs us."

"Protect this world?" Zoisite echoed his words sarcastically, "Take a look around you, Jed. This world is long past needing protection. It's been blasted apart. There's nothing we can do about at this point."

"Then we find the man who _can _do something about it." Jadeite promised and his eyes lit up.

"Jadeite…" Zoisite started to speak, but his own voice caught wistfully in his throat.

"He's out there, Zoisite." Jadeite said with utmost certainty, "They all are."

"I wish I could share your optimism." Zoisite said honestly but then looked away, "I was alone in this city for as long as you, but… I've just about had enough."

"Trust me, Zoi." Jadeite said with a smile, "We're going to get through this."

"Yeah."

"I'm going to go check out the top floor." Jadeite said and motioned to the door leading from the roof down into the building, "Keep an eye out up here?"

"Whatever you say, boss." Zoisite said forcing a grin.

"Technically you outrank me, remember?" Jadeite quipped and tested the handle on the door. It swung open freely. "Be right back."

"Be right here." Zoisite assured him and Jadeite descended into the building.

The building the two Shitennou had chosen by default as their refuge was an office building. When Jadeite descended the maintenance ladder into the top floor he was met by cubicles, desks, and computers. Electricity and lights were long gone, but Jadeite's night vision was substantial and he had little difficulty navigating. He stopped near a few cubicles and noted cups half-full with stagnant water or partially-gelatinized soda. Pictures and other knick-knacks were posted on bulletin boards or scattered on the desks. Some jackets and sweaters were still draped over the backs of chairs.

He didn't dwell in one spot for long. He quickly found the outside row of cubicles and followed them to a corridor leading to a row offices. His many months of scavenging had honed is instincts to pick the best possible location and he sought out the largest of all the offices which likely would have belonged to the highest-level executive of whatever long-dead company the building housed. Sure enough the office was opulent and decorated in a high-end fashion, but Jadeite found little of use to him. In one of the desk drawers sat a bottle of blue label Johnnie Walker scotch. He took a drink from the bottle just because it was there, but decided against taking it with him.

The Shitennou slumped down in the leather rolling chair and sighed. Papers and an empty briefcase covered most of the desk. Looking down he noticed a silver glint hidden underneath a stack of papers and he discovered it was a cell phone. He hadn't come across many electronics during his months of isolation, not that he was seeking them out, but he couldn't resist this opportunity. He held the power button down and the device suddenly sprang to life. The battery life indicator flashed immediately. Considering the building was already surrounded and the bottom floor was swarming with Sufferers Jadeite decided a small release of power was acceptable. His palm glowed blue as mystic energy coursed into the phone. The battery icon filled and stopped flashing.

Jadeite was unfamiliar with electronics, but the setup of the device was logical enough that he grasped its operation quickly. He navigated through menus to the phone's stored memory and found the previous user's inbox of text messages. The dates meant little to him considering he didn't know what day, month, or year it was, but the last few messages the phone's owner received were all sent on the same day within a short span of time. He deduced that given their stark, succinct nature they likely were sent on the day that the nameless tragedy befell the city.

[10:15PM] why haven't you left yet? call me asap!

[10:22PM] you need 2 get out of there

[11:08PM] they're telling us to go to the CT. i'll wait for you as long as i can

[11:31PM] WHERE ARE YOU?

[11:44PM] i'm taking the kids, we have to try to get to the CT. please be there.

[11:58PM] something's happening outside. people are screaming. why aren't you here? I love you.

Jadeite clicked the phone off and pondered the messages. The thought of such desperation was sickening. He tried to imagine the situation the sender of the messages was in, but he found it too difficult to contemplate. Whatever calamity had struck obviously gave some manner of warning. People tried to find shelter or protection, apparently some were told to go to a place called CT. _CT_. Jadeite wracked his brain for every possible meaning, but came up blank.

Deciding against his previous notion to leave behind the fine bottle of scotch, Jadeite picked it up again and walked out of the room. It appeared as though he was going to find little of use to him on this floor, but he was reluctant to explore deeper in the building by himself. It would be much easier to scavenge and look for alternate routes out of the building if Zoisite could help him. He took another drink of the scotch. The warmth of the alcohol was doing wonders to assuage the pain of his bruised ribs. He quickly retraced his steps and ascended to the roof.

The first thing Jadeite noticed when he returned to the roof was that Zoisite was slumped over. He thought perhaps the younger king had drifted off to sleep but a few steps toward him his heart sank. Jadeite's backpack had been ripped open. His small orange bottle of tiny blue pills was laying open and spilled in Zoisite's hand. The brick of cocaine he had been carrying as barter material was torn open and scattered as though someone had dropped a bag of flour from ten feet up. He rushed to the Shitennou's side and propped him into a sitting position.

Zoisite was catatonic. His lips were slightly upturned and his face read practically bliss. His eyes were still open wide and dilated, but Jadeite could hear no breaths escaping his lips. The side of his face was caked with white powder and his nose was swollen and bright red. Jadeite reached out and shook Zoisite by the shoulders but received no response.

"Jesus, Jesus, shit…" Jadeite swore as he continued shaking his companion, "Christ almighty, Zoisite, wake up! Wake up!"

Jadeite tore his companion's shirt open and laid a bare hand on his flat chest to feel for a heartbeat, but felt nothing but cooling skin and slack muscle. He shook the younger man harder, but his head merely bounced around at odd angles as though he were a bobble head doll.

"God damn it, Zoisite!" Jadeite screamed and flared out his palm with no other recourse and slapped the catatonic king across the mouth as hard as he could, "Wake up!"

He backhanded Zoisite again, "Wake up!"

Jadeite was putting all the strength he had into his hand. He wound up for one final swing as tears began to well in his eyes. "You dumb son of a bitch…" he cried and hit him again, "WAKE UP!"

Zoisite sucked in a breath as loud and painful as any Jadeite had heard. He lurched forward gasping for air and then fell right back down onto the roof. He coughed and sputtered horribly. His nose ran with blood and mucus as he furiously rubbed it. Zoisite's whole body began to shake and twitch involuntarily. The king let out painful bursts of moaning laughter.

"God damn it, Zoisite!" Jadeite demanded as he grabbed Zoisite by the lapels and straddled him, "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"At-t the m-m-moment, n-nothing!" Zoisite stuttered as his wild eyes danced around Jadete's face, "Ev-verything is f-fucking amazing!" He was grinning madly, blissfully unaware of his predicament and riding the high of his life.

"Hold still, you idiot." Jadeite ordered as he tried to calm the spastic Shitennou. He reached down and placed both hands, folded over one another, on Zoisite's chest.

"W-what are you d-doing?" Zoisite stammered in his delirium.

"Drawing this shit out of you." Jadeite replied as he attempted to concentrate his inborn Shitennou powers into the tips of his fingers.

"You could j-j-just leave me here." Zoisite suggested, still barely aware of his conscious reality even through all the drugs.

"Don't tempt me." Jadeite replied with a grim smile.

His hands began to glow over Zoisite's chest as the Shitennou's healing powers worked their way through his body. Down below on the street the Sufferers felt the release of power and their frantic clawing and groaning intensified tenfold. Jadeite blocked out the terrible sound and concentrated harder. He cleared out Zoisite's body of as much of the pollutant as he could. Zoisite's glossed eyes began to regain their sheen and soon his full awareness returned. Jadeite crawled away and suddenly slumped down on the ground next to Zoisite. His eyes bugged out and he clutched the side of his head with a grimace.

"Oh, wow." He gasped.

"Hell of a thing, isn't it?" Zoisite asked almost happily, "Get a bit of my residual high, did you?"

"Residual?" Jadeite asked as his vision swam and his body suddenly began to feel like it was made of mashed potatoes, "Christ, what the hell were _you_ feeling?"

"Almost nothing." Zoisite replied grimly and began staring off into space.

Jadeite had the presence of mind to place himself between Zoisite and what was left of the drugs he ingested. He also handed the younger king a towel to wipe the excess white powder off his face, but it took Jadeite several hours to completely work the stimulant out of his system. Zoisite fell asleep long before then and as night fell on the city the blonde king was once again alone with his thoughts. The herd of Sufferers below had finally managed to break into the building, but they were thwarted by the stairs as they tripped and trampled over each other.

Suddenly a shadow pulled his attention away from his silent ponderings. There was something moving swiftly below in the street adjacent to their refuge. Jadeite scurried on his hands and knees to the edge of the roof and peered down where he saw what appeared to be two men wearing long, concealing robes moving swiftly in and out of the dark crevices of the buildings on the opposite side of the street. The horde of Sufferers had not detected their presence as they were obviously too interested in their futile attempt to reach the Shitennou.

Jadeite's heart leapt into his throat when he saw the two figures. It had been so long since he had seen anyone that coming across Zoisite was like an epiphany. The presence of two more in such close proximity could only mean one thing: Nephrite and Kunzite. Jadeite was just about to jump up and call to his long-lost comrades when he saw the figures below halt and turn toward each other. Something passed between them, but the young Shitennou could not make it out. It was vaguely rectangular in shape, about the size of a shoebox. The two figures huddled over it, conversing in quick, unintelligible whispers. Then he heard the telltale electronic chirp of circuits powering up. The Sufferers heard it to and all at once the grotesque herd turned their attention to the darkened alleys.

The object in question was now in the air. The two figures were running back the way they came at full speed. The box-shaped item clattered to the ground inside the foyer of the building that Jadeite and Zoisite were trapped in. The Sufferers began to huddle around it and the incessant, staccato beep that it made. Jadeite's teeth clattered together and every ounce of his not inconsiderable will was now put into reaching Zoisite before the…

Explosion. A fireball ripped through the bottom floor of the building and every one of the fifty-strong mob of Sufferers were incinerated where they shambled. The remaining windows in the building shattered as the shockwave expanded. The roof buckled and Jadeite lost his balance in mid-stride. Zoisite awoke with a start, panicked and groggy. A horrible crumbling noise below signaled their fate as the building shifted on its foundations and began to topple. The surface of the roof disappeared beneath them into the inferno below. Jadeite grabbed Zoisite's arm and did the only thing he could do and jumped. He didn't choose a direction; he simply jumped to be in the air and away from the crumbling building.

They both fell, screaming into the night. They hit the ground hard and the last thing Jadeite saw before losing consciousness was a 10-story building on fire falling straight on top of him.


	4. Chapter 4

**CHAPTER THREE**

"…_dangerous. We should kill them now!"_

"_We don't know what they…"_

"…_can use their powers! They would…"_

"_Unacceptable! You're going to get us…"_

"…_two calm down!"_

Voices were cutting in and out. There were at least three people in the room, but possibly more. Jadeite was only barely aware of their presence. His eyes were covered by some sort of dark cloth. His hands were bound behind him and he knew he was lying down. His ears were still ringing and he could still smell the smoldering ruins of the office building as it crashed down on top of him. He tried to mentally assess his condition. Aside from his ribs which were already bruised, a slight stinging sensation around his lips, and a considerable headache he felt fine. No bones felt broken and thankfully it didn't seem like he was missing any limbs.

"What were you even thinking bringing them here?" A voice asked, now clearing up substantially as Jadeite regained full consciousness. The man's voice seemed impatient and jittery, "They could be from one of those crystal-ships!"

"Then what were they doing trapped in a building full of Sufferers?" a second voice asked. This one seemed to be quite a bit more level-headed.

"We don't need this extra burden." The third voice spoke up. He seemed indignant like the first, but not as brash, "You should have left them in the rubble."

"And deny my Hippocratic Oath?" the second man, apparently some sort of doctor, rebuked his colleagues.

"Look outside, Tomoe!" The first man barked, "The end of the world came and went! Things are a bit different now. Your scruples are going to get us all killed!"

"From where I sit nothing has changed, Shin." The doctor replied, "_Primum non nocere_."

"You're not even a doctor, Tomoe." Shin replied. Jadeite heard the unmistakable sound of metal slipping out of leather, "You might not want to do harm, but I certainly can."

"Shin, wait!" the third man shouted.

Jadeite was not about to find himself blindfolded, bound, and helplessly stabbed to death. He summoned his strength and snapped the bonds that held his arms and tore off the blindfold. Zoisite was unconscious on a cot next to him. He saw the bespectacled doctor named Tomoe who was wearing a tattered lab coat go wide-eyed. The third, unnamed man was large and imposing, but even he was surprised by Jadeite's sudden return to consciousness. The second man, Shin, was younger, wielding a dagger, and undeterred by the fact that his target had risen from the gurney. Jadeite dodged out of the way of the knife, rolled off the bed and in an astounding display of speed disarmed Shin and wound his arm around the young man's neck in an inescapable headlock.

"Yoshiro!" Shin gasped towards the third man and he drew a pistol out of a holster at his side and leveled the weapon with surprising accuracy at Jadeite's temple.

"Stop it!" Tomoe shouted and forced Yoshiro's gun away from Jadeite's head and stepped between the two men, "Everyone just calm down!"

"Tell him to release Shin." Yoshiro ordered and retargeted his weapon at Jadeite's head again.

"What if you miss, Yoshiro?" the doctor pleaded, "You might hit Shin."

"I won't miss." Yoshiro promised.

"Get him off!" Shin cried from Jadeite's iron grasp.

"Stop pointing that gun at me and I'll let him go." Jadeite told the assembled men. They all seemed surprised that he could speak, let alone speak their language so well, "Did you hear me?"

"Let Shin go and I'll put the gun away." Yoshiro ordered.

Jadeite grumbled to himself. No stand-off like this ever came to an easy conclusion. Reluctantly he relaxed his grip on the young Japanese boy and released Shin in a show of good faith. He only hoped the elder Yoshiro retained some sense of honor and would, as he bargained, not shoot him in the head. Shin rejoined the other men across from Jadeite and Yoshiro lowered his handgun to his side.

"What are you waiting for? Shoot him!" Shin cried out.

Yoshiro didn't answer. His eyes moved to the side and his mouth twitched in a slight grimace of pain. Shin whirled around to see a newly conscious Zoisite standing behind Yoshiro with a scalpel pressed against his kidney. Zoisite's other hand darted up holding a full hypodermic needle and he shoved it against Yoshiro's carotid artery drawing a small trail of blood from the prick.

"I have no idea what's in here." Zoisite told Shin and the doctor, "So if you don't want Mr. Yoshiro to be the lab rat, I suggest everyone takes a few steps back."

Tomoe and Shin did just that and slid back a few steps on their heels. Jadeite approached Yoshiro and pulled the gun out of his hand and performed a cursory check to see if any other weapons were hidden on him. Finding none, he nodded to Zoisite who reluctantly released the taller man and shoved him away.

"We should have just gassed them." Shin mumbled.

"Where are we?" Jadeite demanded in spite of Shin's threats.

"Don't tell them anything!" Shin warned loudly.

"Shut up, kid." Zoisite ordered and stepped forward aiming his scalpel at the younger man.

"Please, there's no reason for violence." The doctor said and stepped to the head of his group, "I'm Professor Souichi Tomoe. These are my assistants, Shin and Yoshiro Sato."

"Why did you bring us here?" Jadeite asked forcefully.

"You were caught in an explosion." Tomoe explained and Jadeite vividly recalled the moment. Tomoe turned to Zoisite and said, "You were thrown clear of most of the rubble when the building collapsed." He said to Jadeite, "But the building practically fell on top of you. It's a miracle you're alive."

"The miracle is how he convinced us to drag your asses back here at all." Shin grumbled.

"Didn't I tell you to shut up?" Zoisite barked at the younger man again.

"Zoi…" Jadeite attempted to get his colleague to back down and addressed the professor respectfully, "Thank you for your help. Did you see the men who set off the explosion?" Jadeite's heart began to beat faster with the anticipation of finally reuniting the Shitennou.

"You're looking at them." Yoshiro responded and motioned with his thumb to Shin and himself.

"You two?" Jadeite gasped. His hope receded, "Why?"

"Unfortunately it's the only way we can defend ourselves." Tomoe replied and motioned to a workbench nearby littered with papers and components, "I used to be heavily involved in genetic research, but these days I'm afraid basic chemistry has become my primary interest."

"You're building more of those bombs, aren't you?" Jadeite asked astounded that these three men were capable of such complete destruction.

"We've been doing it now for about three months." Tomoe replied, "We scour the area for the raw materials and I can break them down into the proper components to build the explosives. It's the only thing that has been keeping us safe."

"If a large enough group of Sufferers gets too close to our refuge Shin and I herd them into an open area and toss one of these into the middle of them." Yoshiro announced proudly, "I've never seen a single one of those things survive after one of Doc's bombs goes off."

"And that building we were hiding in was too close to your refuge for comfort, huh?" Zoisite asked.

"No, that was just a good opportunity to then their numbers." Shin answered swiftly with a mischievous grin, "What did they call that in the war movies? A preemptive strike?"

"Wait." Jadeite put the pieces together in his head, "The Sufferers are only attracted to living things. You must have known that someone was inside that building when you set off the bomb."

Yoshiro and Shin traded a nervous glance with the professor, but said nothing. Zoisite's hands clenched into fists and he was beginning to breathe harder. Jadeite was going to have to control him if the wrong words were said. Zoisite's temper was never the most predictable element within the Shitennou.

"Forgive me." Tomoe said and removed his glasses to wipe his eyes, "We put you in unnecessary risk, but…" he paused and looked over the two strange men before him, "But I needed to bring you here to be sure that you would help us."

"Help you?" Zoisite snapped, "You tried to _kill_ us!"

Yoshiro grumbled to himself and grunted, "Like one of our bombs could harm a Sailor Senshi…"

"A what?" Jadeite and Zoisite both asked.

"We saw you in the square fighting off the Sufferers." Tomoe revealed at last, "We saw your strength and stamina and the strange powers that you wield, but we thought all the senshi were stationed within the Crystal Tower."

"They _are_ all hiding in the Tower." Shin remarked coldly, "Once this shit-storm hit even the senshi turned tail and ran."

"We're not senshi." Jadeite interrupted the growing debate and all eyes were suddenly on him, "Although we have had dealings with them in the past."

"If you're not senshi then what are you?" Yoshiro demanded, "No human moves the way you do or can cast energy from their fingertips."

"We're something different." Jadeite replied cryptically. No need to go into detail with these people. "But that doesn't matter." Jadeite remembered the abbreviation _CT _from the cell phone in the office building that fell on top of him and addressed the professor again, "What is this Crystal Tower?"

"You're… you're kidding, right?" Tomoe asked astonished. Jadeite indicated with a scowl that he was not. "The Crystal Tower is the only safe place in the world right now. It's dead-center in the middle of what used to be downtown Tokyo."

"Used to be?" Jadeite asked further.

"It's called Crystal Tokyo now." Tomoe replied, "At least that's what they used to call it before the plague and the Sufferers."

Jadeite glanced at Zoisite who wore the same blank, confused expression. He turned back to the professor and hazarded another question, "How do we get there?"

"Professor, stop!" Shin screeched and threw himself in front of Tomoe, "You can't see it, but I can. He's one of _them_, I know he is! How else can you explain his strange powers and these ridiculous questions?"

"Shin, would you just—" the professor tried to interject.

"NO!" Shin cried and accused Jadeite directly, "Your people did this to us! Well, you're not going to get anything from me. I'll _die_ before I let them tell you anything, so just kill us and be done with it so you can go back up to your crystal-ship."

"Crystal-ship?" Jadeite wondered aloud. He heard movement and saw the blur of Zoisite coming up behind the Doctor.

"I've had enough of this." Zoisite threatened. They all spun around to see him standing near the workbench. He chose the box-shaped bomb that looked most complete and gestured towards the circuits, "It's time to stop fighting and accusing and time to start making a whole lot more sense."

"Go ahead." Shin threatened the Shitennou, "You'll both die with us."

Zoisite wasn't one to be threatened. He flicked a switch near the circuit board and an LCD screen began a fifteen second countdown. Yoshiro, Shin, and Tomoe all backed away with a start. Zoisite nonchalantly tossed the bomb to Shin who, in spite of his fear, caught and fumbled with the explosive before tossing it against the opposite wall.

"GET OUT!" Yoshiro screamed at the top of his lungs and the group headed for the door. Jadeite was blocking their way.

"You're insane!" Shin shrieked and tried to shoulder his way past the immovable Shitennou.

Zoisite had retrieved the bomb and walked over to the group as the timer continued to count down. They backed into the concrete wall behind them and tried uselessly to claw their way through it.

5…

4…

3…

2…

The copper-haired King snapped his fingers and the circuit went dead. The bomb was rendered inert again and he casually tossed it over his shoulder back onto the workbench. Jadeite glared at his companion with a disapproving look for using any shred of their powers, but Zoisite only shrugged in response.

"I don't know what you think we are." Jadeite said slowly and methodically, "But I can assure you we are _not_ your enemy. We do not come from whatever these crystal-ships are and we most certainly did not cause whatever happened to the Earth."

In spite of his disapproving and trigger-happy companions Tomoe replied, "I believe you."

"Good." Zoisite spoke up, "Now, onto more important matters… Do you have any food?"

The professor's group and Jadeite all cocked their heads toward Zoisite who offered them nothing in reply but a look of innocence. Apparently the awkward request was just what was needed to cool off the rowdy bunch because Yoshiro was the first to laugh at his odd manner of request. For the first time since the Shitennou awoke to this blasted world they sat down and ate a real meal, albeit one derived from freeze-dried military rations, but it might as well have been a royal feast.

"So what exactly happened?" Jadeite began his inquiry to the professor seated next to him, "Where did these Sufferers come from and why is it only safe in the Crystal Tower?"

"It started in the late twenty-first century." Tomoe began, "Everyone blamed global warming at first. Ocean levels rose, coastal cities flooded, the ice caps disappeared. But then earthquakes started ravaging the planet and long-dormant volcanoes started erupting. People were dying; hundreds and thousands every day. It was like the planet was being torn apart from the inside."

"What caused it?"

"We still don't know." Tomoe replied and his two colleagues nodded as well, "All we know is what stopped it." A tiny, knowing smile drew across his lips, "Sailor Moon."

"Sailor Moon?" Jadeite asked with a start. He was not expecting to hear of her.

"She sent a broadcast out on television, radio, and the internet asking everyone who heard her message to believe in her." Tomoe answered and smirked, "Can you believe such a request? It sounds ridiculous to even say it, but at the time and considering that Japan was sinking into the sea with each passing second we were willing to try anything to save ourselves."

"She focused some kind of energy through an item called the _ginzuishou_." He explained, "I couldn't understand any of what was happening myself, but somehow I knew that she was putting her life on the line to save the world… I think that's what finally got the people to believe in her … and then I fell asleep."

"Asleep?" Jadeite coughed.

"A deep hibernation." The professor clarified, "Whatever that _ginzuishou_ did, it covered the earth in some sort of protective energy shell and everything was put into a state of suspended animation. When we woke up the damage to the Earth had been healed, like nothing had ever happened. That's when Crystal Tokyo was built, practically overnight, and Sailor Moon was hailed as the savior of mankind."

"How long was this hibernation?" Zoisite wondered.

"At least a thousand years." Yoshiro answered and the Shitennou's eyes went wide, "Anyway, that's what the professor says."

"Is that true?" Jadeite gasped.

"Yes." Tomoe replied evenly, "That's what Sailor Moon told us when we awoke, or rather Neo-Queen Serenity as she's now called. Scientists confirmed it by measuring stellar drift among a hundred other tests. It's now the mid 30th century, but as far as we're all concerned it's like we were just asleep for a thousand years."

"So in reality nothing has changed all that much?" Jadeite asked completely astonished, "I mean, except for this Crystal Tokyo place, right?"

"That's right." The professor replied and cast his glance down at the table, "At least that's how it was until the plague hit."

"And the plague is what created the Sufferers?" Zoisite inferred. The present company nodded slowly.

"I was one of the foremost genetic researchers in the world before all this happened." Tomoe told his guests, "I tried everything I could, but nothing I did, none of the research or tests I performed helped. Whatever the plague was that swept across the Earth wasn't genetic. It wasn't even biological; it wasn't affecting matter on the material scale. It was affecting people's energy, not matter, and rewriting it."

"It was like a storm of dark energy." Shin recalled solemnly, "The wind was black; even the lightning was black."

"It spread from a central point just south of the city." Professor Tomoe explained further, "Neo-Queen Serenity and the Senshi tried to stop it, but by the time they managed to counteract the plague it had already spread across three quarters of the world. Most of the people who were within sight of the Crystal Tower weren't affected, but the rest…"

"You mean the rest of the _world_ is like this?" Zoisite paled at the thought.

"Most of it, yes." Yoshiro answered, "People who were inside sealed buildings when the plague hit were spared, or if they were underground or high enough above sea level, but the vast majority of the Earth's population was stricken."

"The Sufferers were human once." Jadeite stated in a businesslike tone, "I've had to kill them to survive."

"So have we." Shin agreed.

"Is there any chance they could have been cured?" Jadeite finished his thought.

No one wanted to answer. One look at any one of the ragged, disheveled creatures would tell you that they had been ordinary men, women and children before the plague turned them into the foul energy-sucking things they were today. Jadeite remembered the first one he killed, the little girl in the alley. Zoisite was poking at a pile of reconstituted rice trying desperately not to make eye contact with anyone. Not even Professor Tomoe spoke up. Jadeite decided to change the topic.

"Where did the plague come from?"

"The crystal-ships." Shin answered first, "Haven't you seen them?"

"No." Jadeite replied honestly.

"You'd know if you had." Tomoe replied picking up on and envying the ignorance in Jadeite's voice, "They still fly over the city sometimes. They're huge, as big as skyscrapers. They appear to be made out of a substance similar to obsidian shaped into huge spikes protruding from the center almost like a dandelion seed."

"Where did the ships come from?" Jadeite asked, "Are they extra-terrestrial?"

"They come from a rogue planet called Nemesis." Tomoe answered, "But the people behind this atrocity are not aliens. They're the political refugees who opposed Neo-Queen Serenity's rise to power."

"You say that like we should know what you're talking about." Zoisite mentioned somewhat rudely.

"You mean you don't?" Yoshiro asked crossly, "Just where exactly are you people from, anyway?"

"A person calling himself the Wiseman led a revolt against Crystal Tokyo not long after it was created." Tomoe interjected to halt any arguments that might erupt between Yoshiro and the easily-angered Zoisite, "The dissenters branded themselves with inverted, black crescent moon markings on their foreheads, the exact opposite of the golden crescent that adorns the forehead of our Queen. They called themselves the Black Moon Clan and opposed the _ginzuishou's_ power which rendered everyone on earth, for the most part, ageless."

"Immortal?" Jadeite questioned, "And they opposed that?"

"The Wiseman convinced his followers that it was abomination against nature." The Professor elaborated, "Neo-Queen Serenity was too compassionate to destroy them, the Clan was too powerful to imprison, and she would not willingly force immortality upon them, so they chose exile on Nemesis."

"And now they've come back for revenge." Shin added.

"They tried an all-out attack which didn't work. They destroyed plenty, like our city, but they couldn't overcome the strength of the Queen and her Senshi." Yoshiro continued, "That's when they sent the plague that created the Sufferers. Now the only truly safe place in the world is inside the Crystal Tower."

"And the Black Moon Clan is still out there?" Jadeite asked on the edge of his seat.

"Yes." Tomoe replied sadly, "And no one knows what they're doing. For that matter no one knows what's happening inside the Crystal Tower. We've been trying to get back there, but we've been stuck here for the last three months."

"Why?" Zoisite asked plainly, "You've got enough explosives here to level half the city. I'm sure you guys could make it."

"We might be able to make it." Yoshiro answered, "But there are many who wouldn't."

"There are three of you." Zoisite replied dryly.

Tomoe exchanged glances with his assistants and stood up from the table. "Come with me."

Jadeite and Zoisite followed along and fell in behind the Professor as he unlocked a padlock on a set of chained double doors. They walked into a long dark hallway that led deeper into the building they were in until they came to another similar set of doors.

"We didn't come here just to set explosives and kill off the infected." Tomoe said regretfully as he undid the lock on this door, "This is why we're here."

He swung the door open and the Shitennou could do little but stare in slack-jawed amazement. The room beyond was both tall and deep, stretching out before them in multiple levels. Clothes and sheets were hung on lines stretching between the levels and a multitude of people moved about within. Small rooms with barred doors lined the walls and he recognized the building as a prison. However, it seemed that it had been repurposed as a refuge for these men, women and children who had not been affected by the Sufferer plague. Two children ran past the door laughing and playing oblivious to their entry.

"There are nearly five hundred people in this building." Tomoe estimated, "We were told when we left the Crystal Tower that we wouldn't be able to get back in, but we left anyway. We left for these people who couldn't make it to the Tower in the first place."

"How do you survive?" Jadeite asked in amazement.

"We have a very large stockpile of rations that we scavenged when we first arrived here." The Professor explained and waved to a woman he recognized as they walked around the middle level of the prison refuge, "We also try to grow as much food as we can, but unfortunately the only thing that wants to thrive in this overcast environment is mushrooms and other fungi."

"Tasty." Zoisite remarked as they walked along.

"I'm able to purify the water fairly easily." He continued, "And Yoshiro and Shin go out and scavenge what they can every few days. It's nowhere close to an ideal situation, but it's the best we can do."

"There are plenty of able-bodied men here." Jadeite observed as they walked and spotted several younger men playing makeshift basketball on the lowest level, "With this many you should have no problem defending against the Sufferers. How close is the Crystal Tower from here?"

"It's not the Sufferers that are preventing us from leaving this place." Tomoe replied mysteriously.

"Then what?" Zoisite asked, "The crystal-ships?"

"The _Shinigami_." Shin answered and shivered where he stood.

"The what?" Zoisite openly laughed.

"Don't laugh!" Shin barked immediately, "The Shinigami is the god of death. He hears everything and sees everything that happens in this building."

"What do you mean?" Jadeite asked intrigued by this development.

"We don't exactly know who or what he is." Tomoe explained, "But from what we can tell he's a complete lunatic with a high-powered rifle. He's foiled every attempt we've made to leave. He shoots our explosives right out of our hands and openly attacks anyone who strays too far from the building."

"How many have you lost?" Zoisite asked as his tactician's mind began churning.

"None, thankfully." The professor answered, "Aside from our explosives he only fires warning shots and it's enough to scare people into turning back, but I fear if we tried to leave he wouldn't hesitate to start killing."

"He's turned the path to the Crystal Tower into his own personal Thermopylae." Yoshiro answered. Between his skill with a handgun and mentioning of that historical battle Jadeite assumed he had been a military man before all this happened.

"Why don't you just find another route?" Zoisite asked the obvious question.

"The other routes are either too dense or too exposed." Yoshiro explained quickly, "The deeper into the city we go the more Sufferers we encounter and if we try to make for the suburbs we leave ourselves open to the Black Moon Clan and their crystal-ships."

"What about underground?" Jadeite suggested. Tomoe shook his head.

"Most of the underground passages were collapsed in the first attack." He explained, "The subway was one of our first attempts, but the tunnels have become so unstable that the risk is now too great to explore them."

"You have to take some risk if you ever want to leave this place." Zoisite advised, "This Shinigami is just one man. You have hundreds here. The odds are definitely stacked in your favor."

"I'm not willing to sacrifice _one_ man to bring that lunatic down, let alone hundreds." Yoshiro exclaimed, "We made a promise that we would bring back as many people as we could find and now that we've found them, I'm not going to lose _anyone_!"

"Yoshiro…" Tomoe tried to calm his companion down, "I know you have your doubts about the Shinigami, but I assure you he is no ordinary man. There may even be more than one person although we have never seen more than a silhouette."

"We've sent a half dozen people out against him before." Yoshiro added, "But he managed to terrify or injure each one. The speed and accuracy of his shots and the impossible angles he manages are not the work of any normal human being."

"I've seen him bend bullets around telephone poles and shoot the knots off people's shoelaces." Shin shivered against his words, "The Shinigami is just playing with us, biding his time until he strikes."

"Is this why you brought us here?" Jadeite asked after hearing the explanation, "You want us to take care of this Shinigami for you?"

"Please believe me when I tell you we have exhausted any other option." Tomoe begged the Shitennou and specifically addressed Zoisite, "When we saw you fighting that horde of Sufferers in the square it was the first time since we came to this place that we had any hope of leaving. These people we're protecting have done nothing to deserve this miserable existence; they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"What about the Sufferers?" Jadeite asked and motioned to himself and Zoisite, "The powers you witnessed us using will draw them in huge numbers. We may be able to defeat this Shinigami for you, but then you'll face a literal army of Sufferers."

"We can handle them." Shin said reluctantly. For all his youth and bluster he seemed at least marginally repentant for killing what was once human.

"And if you agree to help us I know we can make it to the Crystal Tower without losing anyone." Tomoe said expectantly, "Once we get past the courtyard to the main road it's a straight shot to the center of Crystal Tokyo."

"It seems like that Tower is where we want to go anyway." Jadeite said and glanced at his oddly silent Shitennou companion, "Zoisite? Are you up for this?"

"Answer me one question." Zoisite replied and looked Professor Tomoe in the eye, "You've spoken so highly of this Neo-Queen Serenity, but I'm forced to wonder something." He stepped closer and looked almost broken, "Does she have a King?"

"Yes, she does." Tomoe answered. Jadeite and Zoisite's hearts missed several beats, "King Endymion."

"Endymion?" Jadeite gasped at the name.

"He was the one who authorized us to come out here and look for survivors." The Professor told them and then looked somewhat puzzled, "Does that make a difference to you?"

"Yes." Jadeite answered breathlessly, "We serve King Endymion as well; somewhat differently."

"Then he hasn't given up on us!" Tomoe exclaimed drawing his own happy conclusion.

Jadeite and Zoisite were rapt with the revelation that not only was their Master alive and well, but apparently had ascended to his rightful position as monarch over all the Earth. Zoisite's eyes were moist, Jadeite noted, and he thanked every power that he could think of for this one measure of hope.

"Professor Tomoe." Jadeite addressed the scientist and cracked the knuckles of both hands in one motion, "Take us to this Shinigami."


	5. Chapter 5

**CHAPTER FOUR**

Zoisite stared down the barrel of the gun. It was a good gun; that in and of itself was a comforting notion. The barrel wasn't warped, so the bullet would fly true. No chance for a near-miss, especially at close range. The firing pin looked brand new and the chamber had been recently oiled. The trigger was tight and responsive. When he slid the clip into the butt of the weapon the satisfying, heavy click reassured him that that the bullets would easily chamber, not get bound up or jammed.

This was a _good _gun. It was probably never fired before. It smelled heavily of oil thanks to that recent cleaning, but there was an undertone of something else; something sterile like cellophane or plastic wrap. It was the same smell that a new computer or cell phone might have fresh out of the box. He could only imagine what it might smell like seconds after firing. _Probably wonderful._ He inhaled deeply hoping to catch that wonderful burning scent just before the hollow-point shell tore the nose and every other visible feature off his face and caved them into the back of his skull.

With a mad laugh he pulled the trigger.

"Zoisite."

He fell off the cot, slammed his head off the metal grates that passed for a floor and for a moment didn't move thanks to the lingering sleep paralysis and the powerful remnants of the dream. At that moment he might as well have been dead. He certainly felt less than alive.

"Zoi, let's get going." The voice that pulled him from his possibly eternal slumber called again. The room was dark, but he knew the voice well enough.

Jadeite's new boots squeaked in the darkness as he moved around their tiny cell of a bedroom. Zoisite lifted himself groggily to his feet, both thankful and perturbed to hear his own boots squeak against the metal mesh as well.

"You okay?" Jadeite asked. He didn't need to see his face to see the concern.

"It's been so long since I had a decent night's sleep." Zoisite mourned, "And of course the first time I get the chance, I get woken up at the ass-crack of dawn to hunt down a murderous demon."

"You were in pretty deep." Jadeite told him quietly, "Were you dreaming?"

"Mmm hmm."

"What about?"

Zoisite snickered and said, "Nothing you really want to hear about, Jed."

"I dreamt of Elysion." Jadeite countered in a solemn tone.

"What?" Zoisite asked.

"Elysion." Jadeite sounded astonished, "The Golden Kingdom."

"Oh." Zoisite replied and began stretching his arms and legs out. Joints popped as muscles strained.

"Oh?" Jadeite asked, "That's it?"

"Does there need to be any more?" Zoisite asked back.

"What do _you_ remember?" Jadeite inquired.

"Names, mostly." His companion answered as if he were in a classroom, "The sun. Grass. Roses."

"That's it?"

"Yes…" Zoisite sighed. His frustration was evident, "Can we maybe not do this now?"

"Do what?"

"Go soul-searching for Elysion." Zoisite responded, "I know what you're going t ask me, Jed. I know where it's going to lead and it's not the sort of thing I want on my mind while I'm walking into a sniper's kill box."

"How can it not be the foremost thought in your mind?" Jadeite demanded. The briefest sliver of light from the unrelentingly overcast morning crept in showing the intensity in Jadeite's face.

"Because I woke up to a city in ruins with no clothes, no food, and no people anywhere to be found." Zoisite explained to him coldly, "All I was focused on was surviving."

"So you didn't remember Elysion at all?"

"No." Zoisite corrected him, "I remembered it well." He stood up and closed his eyes, "I remember the tranquility and the bliss of living there. It was like heaven." He chuckled in his off-kilter way, "I thought… maybe… it actually _was_ heaven. So I tried to go back."

"That's why you've been trying to kill yourself?" Jadeite mused gloomily.

"Think about it, Jadeite." Zoisite spoke down to him, "If I really wanted to die, don't you think I would've done myself in by now?"

"No." Jadeite answered, crossed his arms, and leaned against the door frame.

"No?" Zoisite chuckled.

"Endymion." Jadeite said. Zoisite's blood flowed a bit colder at the sound of the name.

"Don't preach to me about duty right now, Jed." Zoisite ordered and tried to shoulder his way past his younger companion.

"Endymion wouldn't let you end your own life." Jadeite said. He put his arm out and held Zoisite firm by the shoulder, stopping him in his tracks.

Zoisite went cold; completely frozen. He reached up and tried to pull Jadeite's arm away, but it had become the proverbial immovable object. The younger Shitennou's bright blue eyes had gone dark; dark like His eyes. Jadeite moved forward and seemed to step through his own skin and a new, ancient face stared back at Zoisite. Endymion tightened his grip and scowled.

"Master!" Zoisite could only gasp.

"You won't end your own life." His cold voice stated. Metal slid out of metal and then plunged into flesh with a ravaging tear, "Not before I've had the _pleasure_…"

Zoisite tasted blood, felt immeasurable pain, guilt and sorrow, and then fell into darkness that may as well have been His eyes.

And he would have fallen forever if it hadn't been for Jadeite.

"Zoisite!"

Nothing…

"Wake up!" his companion thumped him solidly in the shoulder once again. It had gone black and blue long ago.

Zoisite stirred slowly, "Master…"

"Zoisite, look at me!" Jadeite ordered.

He followed the order slowly. Those blue eyes were in front of him. Jadeite's face was wet… and dark. He had a hood pulled up over his head and as Zoisite resurfaced in reality he felt the trickle and sudden sizzle of some manner of boiling rain on his face.

"What the hell?" He sputtered as he threw the canvas hood over his own head to protect himself from the dangerous droplets.

"Zoi, are you all right?" Jadeite asked earnestly.

Zoisite shrugged and offered, "I don't think so."

"You just nodded off in the middle of our conversation." Jadeite told him. Zoisite vaguely remembered them talking about something as they walked through the rubble of the city, hunting for Tomoe's _Shinigami._

"I'm sorry." Zoisite answered, surprisingly.

"I heard you call out for Endymion." Jadeite told him directly. His eyes betrayed a question.

"It was just a dream." Zoisite answered and steadied himself against what used to be a wall.

"Didn't seem like a good one." Jadeite mumbled to his companion.

"Jed…" Zoisite spoke slowly. He remembered something the dream-Jadeite had asked him, "What sort of memories do you have?"

"What do you mean?" The question more than perplexed him.

"Do you remember anything?" Zoisite asked more directly, "You know… at all?"

"Oh." Jadeite sighed. "Not much." He looked up, hopeful, "Why? Do you?"

"Vague images." Zoisite answered, "Like wisps of cloud. They're more gut feelings than outright memories. It's hard to explain."

"I feel like I used to know a lot more." Jadeite said. That was enough to pique Zoisite's interest.

"You mean you feel like…" He paused to think of the best phrasing, "You feel like you've forgotten certain things?"

"No… not quite." Jadeite answered and cocked his head, thinking hard himself on how to word the curious sensation, "Not like I've forgotten something. More like I _misplaced_ it."

"Hmm…" Zoisite pondered. Jadeite shook his head.

"I don't know how to describe it." He confessed, "I have these feelings, like you said, and it feels like they're pointing me towards something, but when I look for it… it's not there."

"What do you remember before we woke up in this place?" Zoisite asked, gesturing to the tumbled towers and smashed glass that comprised their dreary, overcast world.

"That's one of the things that I feel like I misplaced." Jadeite answered, "Again, it feels like I know the answer, but I don't know where to look for it."

"I know exactly what you mean." Zoisite agreed and pulled his makeshift tarpaulin jacket tighter.

"When you were dreaming just now." Jadeite asked nodding in Zoisite's direction, "Were you reliving a memory?"

Zoisite tensed and clenched his hands into fists, hidden beneath his coat. The sting of Endymion's blade echoed through him again. "I don't know." He answered.

Their conversation drifted into silence after that. Jadeite seemed to understand that further prodding into Zoisite's dreamscape would only yield an emotional shut-down in his fragile companion, and Zoisite himself was in no mood to continue talking.

So they trudged forward through the sizzling rain. It didn't seem to be acidic, but it was certainly toxic. The droplets left hot, oily streaks on every surface and burned like peroxide on an open wound. Zoisite let out a chirping curse every time an errant dropped touched a hint of bare skin. The rain didn't seem to do any permanent damage to the body, but it was painful and irritating, much like the rest of this ruined world.

They passed through arches of toppled buildings and more than once had to forge their own paths over flipped cars or piles of ruined masonry that blocked their path. Their destination was, as Tomoe had told them, a courtyard a few hundred yards beyond the makeshift prison sanctuary. Jadeite spotted the open, diamond-shaped area first and huddled at the corner of a crumbling building to assess the situation.

The courtyard was bordered on all sides by tall buildings in various states of collapse. There was a ruined, eroded structure in the center of the courtyard, possibly a fountain or some sort of statue. The flower beds had been overgrown, but now everything lay dead and decaying. He looked over the towering buildings to find nearly every window broken. Any one of the literally hundreds of windows could be used a sniper's vantage point. It was a classic kill zone in every sense. There was barely any cover save for a few overturned benches and the sculpture at the center.

"This is crazy." Zoisite muttered.

"There's no point to even try to keep on your guard." Jadeite grumbled, "He could be anywhere in there."

"We could get through." Zoisite suggested in a slightly upturned voice.

"What?" Jadeite gasped at him.

"We could make it through." Zoisite repeated, "Tomoe said there was a road straight to the Crystal Tower just beyond this courtyard."

"You mean just run away and leave those people back there?" Jadeite demanded, throwing his index finger towards the prison sanctuary.

"We could come back for them." Zoisite insisted, though it sounded like he barely believed his own words.

Jadeite, soured by the suggestion, merely shook his head and turned back towards the courtyard with an assessing eye. Zoisite cringed as another drop of searing rain worked its way past his protective layers and burned his face.

"Zoisite." Jadeite spoke after several long, quiet minutes.

"What?"

"I want you to wait here." He ordered.

"Why?" he asked perplexed, "Did you forget something back at Tomoe's camp?"

"No." Jadeite replied firmly, "I'm going in there."

He pointed around the corner of their hiding place with his thumb and a drop of caustic rain singed the tip of his finger. Zoisite craned his neck to look out into the menacing courtyard and met Jadeite's determined gaze with a look of complete disbelief.

"What are you going to do, try to talk him out?" Zoisite challenged, "He's liable to kill you as soon as you stick your head around that corner."

"It's not completely out of the realm of possibility that he can be reasoned with." Jadeite argued.

"It's also not impossible that he won't put a bullet through your skull." Zoisite returned.

"Zoi, Tomoe told us he hasn't ever actually killed anyone." Jadeite reminded his companion.

"They call him the Shinigami, Jed." Zoisite added his own recollection to the argument, "You don't get blessed with a nickname like the God of Death if you haven't killed anyone."

"I'm going in." Jadeite repeated his position, "And I'm going to be counting on you to watch my back."

"And what if he shoots you?" Zoisite queried in his darkly humorous way.

"Then watch for the trajectory of the bullet." Jadeite replied in all seriousness, "At least you'll be able to tell which building he's in."

Zoisite just stared at him. Jadeite was never the type to leap without looking; he was always very meticulous and methodical in his actions. Charging in like a bull was more Nephrite's department… Zoisite felt a twinge of emotion at the thought of one of the missing members of their cadre. He pondered it for a moment. Why could he remember nuances about Jadeite and Nephrite's personalities, but not recall in detail any event prior to awakening in this ruined world? Did he even want to remember? Could the past be even worse than their present?

"Zoi, are you listening?" Jadeite's voice snapped him back to unpleasant reality.

"Sorry." He shook his head and apologized at the same time.

"Keep a sharp eye." Jadeite requested and then stood from his crouched position.

Zoisite's hand shot up instinctively and grabbed Jadeite by the cuff. The bearded blonde King turned around startled with his wide blue eyes beaming.

"Jed…" Zoisite whispered. He didn't have to say any more than that.

"A prayer wouldn't hurt." Jadeite suggested with an uneasy smile and walked around the corner.

Zoisite heard the gunshot and his heart sank as his body leapt into the air, But there was no echo, no smoke, and no scent of burning powder on the wind. He peeped around the corner with the barest sliver of his eye to find Jadeite calmly, cautiously creeping his way towards the center of the courtyard.

Zoisite exhaled, closed his eyes and ordered his brain to "Stop it!"

Jadeite's boots made no sound as he stalked his way into the ruined courtyard. The leaning, creaking buildings threatened to make this place a tomb at any moment, but he forced his way forward, keeping his eyes trained straight ahead and letting every other sense he possessed keep tabs on the world around him. He didn't dare approach the immediate center of the rough diamond of concrete, but merely skirted the edge trying to keep his positioning on the seams between the large slabs as asymmetrical as possible.

He stopped near the edge of a rotted bench and took in his surroundings in a long, leisurely gaze. The gray sky roiled overhead and the sizzling rain had died down to an oily drizzle. The smashed doorways of the bordering buildings looked almost like the yawning maw of some beast ready to devour him. The place felt claustrophobic despite the relative openness of the courtyard itself. With a final, hesitant step he puffed out his chest with a breath of stale air and stated his intentions clearly.

"Hello!" he cried, his voice bouncing up and around the towers, "I'm unarmed!"

"Nice one, Jed." Zoisite grumbled from his hiding spot out of view of the Shinigami's courtyard.

"I'm not looking to pass and I don't want to fight you." Jadeite continued and raised his arms to the level of his eyes to show his lack of defense, "I'm just trying to survive." He looked around, hoping to catch a glimpse of the shadowy assassin, "Just like you, I imagine."

There was no response, not even a whisper of dust ruffled by the breeze. Jadeite frowned inwardly, let his arms fall to his sides and then placed his hands on his hips.

"Jadeite…" Zoisite chattered to himself, feeling more and more anxious for his partner by the minute, "What are you _doing? _He's toying with you!"

Jadeite called out again, "I know it can't be easy out here." He paused, and then added a relatable sentiment, "Alone."

Still nothing.

"There are men and women trapped in a shelter behind me." Jadeite explained, "We're trying to reach the safety of the Crystal Tower."

No reply. No sound at all.

"The road is sure to be dangerous." Jadeite continued shouting at the empty windows, "They will surely need protection." He licked his lips and prepared for the big pitch, "Your skills, as we have been told, would be most valuable. Perhaps we could travel together? Safety in numbers!"

And still the courtyard remained silent.

Jadeite was becoming flustered by now. He ran a hand through his long, scraggly blonde hair and sighed. He glanced around at each of the buildings that surrounded him and still saw nothing.

"What can I offer in return?" He parleyed, "What do you require? Food? Medicine?"

Nothing.

"We can't help each other if you won't talk to me!" Jadeite shouted and took a step forward toward the center of the courtyard.

There was a mechanical click that accompanied his lone footstep and instantly he knew he had crossed some invisible point of no return. The booming report of a high-powered rifle echoed in veritable canyon that surrounded the Shinigami's courtyard and threatened to deafen the Shitennou if he survived whatever wound was about to be inflicted upon him.

He employed his uncanny reflexes and turned his body away from the apparent direction of the sound, but he could not completely dodge the bullet. A solid weight that might as well have been a cannon ball slammed into his right shoulder and nearly propelled him to the ground. He sprinted towards the safety of the alley where Zoisite stood screaming hysterically through the ringing, pounding echo of the explosion. A second report ripped through the air and Jadeite felt a stinging spray of shattered concrete spew up from the ground near his foot. He leapt over the debris that blocked the alley from the courtyard and fell gracelessly into a roll to protect himself from any further shrapnel.

"You idiot!" Zoisite chastised him and pulled him back around the other side of the menacing building.

"He's … so …" Jadeite panted and clutched his shoulder to staunch the flow of blood, "… fast!"

"Calm down, Jed." Zoisite ordered and pulled a clean towel and a bottle of iodine from their small pack of provisions Tomoe had given them.

"Easy! Easy!" Jadeite struggled against the pain as Zoisite pulled his and off his wounded shoulder.

He was just about to use the towel to apply pressure to Jadeite's injured shoulder when to his immediate shock and subsequent relief Zoisite found no visible wound. No smoking, lead-filled lump of burning flesh. No blood. No nothing.

"What is it?" Jadeite panted, still grimacing in pain.

"He didn't hit you." Zoisite said in disbelief.

"The hell he didn't!" Jadeite answered and twisted his neck to a painful degree to get a clear look at his sure to be bloodied and useless appendage, but it was whole and fit… and tingling slightly.

"What the hell?" He gasped.

"I saw you take the impact of a bullet." Zoisite agreed with the scene he was mentally replaying, "A body doesn't move like that on its own."

"Zoisite, he _shot_ me!" Jadeite assured his companion.

"I know." He snapped back, still pondering.

Amazing. Jadeite thought to himself. Zoisite was never academic. He hated study of all kinds, but he was always naturally intuitive to a staggering degree. He could understand abstract concepts at a glance and could always think circles around the rest of the Shitennou. Even here in the midst of a ruined world with a maniac gunman on the other side of a shabby courtyard of cement Zoisite could lose himself in swirling calculations that only existed within the cloudy confines of his own mind.

"Was it a rubber bullet?" Jadeite asked and poked his arm where he recalled the hot lead shell tearing through his flesh.

"No bruising." Zoisite observed.

"Some other kind of concussive shot?" Jadeite hypothesized, "Maybe some sort of compressed air cannon?"

"Anything concussive would have left a visible mark." Zoisite answered somewhat condescendingly. Jadeite recalled, though he had no idea how he knew this, that Zoisite could be like that when he entered a state of deep concentration.

After a few moments of silence he asked, "Zoi?"

"Jadeite, I'm thinking." Zoisite growled at him.

Jadeite rolled his eyes and propped his back up against the cold brick of one of the crumbling buildings surrounding the courtyard. Zoisite continued puzzling and puzzling as the gray sky rolled endlessly above. Intermittent drops of oily, searing rain reminded Jadeite of where they were and what they were doing even as he rested his eyes waiting for Zoisite's eventual unraveling of the entire confusing affair.

"I need you to get shot again." Was the request that roused Jadeite from his dozing.

"What?" He coughed as his back cracked painfully from his awkward position on the ground.

"I need to see where it's coming from." Zoisite said hurriedly. He had found himself a chunk of rock and had scribbled calculations on the bare concrete where they had been sitting.

"Zoi, I know I wasn't actually wounded, but it felt like I got shot." Jadeite reminded him.

"Tough it out." Zoisite more or less ordered without looking up from his rough diagram of the courtyard which he had overlaid with grid lines and rough calculations.

"Why don't we both go in there?" Jadeite suggested, "He can't possibly pick two targets at the same time. We can separate and surround-"

He didn't get to finish as Zoisite shouted, "Don't be a pussy, Jed!"

Jadeite had no reply to that outburst. Zoisite had become obsessed, has he often did, with the task in front of him. He wasn't a meticulous planner like Jadeite and he wasn't a short-sighted brawler like Nephrite, but when Zoisite was presented with a task there would be nothing short of the end of the universe itself that could pull him away from his puzzle before its solving.

Now it was Jadeite's turn to feel that familiar twinge of emotion. He knew so much about Zoisite; his habits, his mannerisms, his foibles… how? How could he know those things out of context? What sort of lives did they share that made them such keen judges of each other's character? He recalled only traces of a green country, a deep sense of camaraderie, and the ever-present outline of the Moon in his memory. That and the unshakable, unquestionable drive to find Endymion, the Master himself.

"How many shots will this take?" Jadeite asked, clenching his fist and his jaw in preparation for the coming pain.

"I can't say for sure." Zoisite confessed, "I'll work as quickly as I can, but I'm betting I'll have the son of a bitch flushed out before he has to reload."

"I'm not a betting man, Zoi." Jadeite reminded his companion with a grimace.

"Neither am I." Zoisite replied, "This isn't random chance or luck of the draw." He was grinning slightly, as if he were relishing the moment, "It's the laws of mathematics at work; it's statistics and probability. Just cold, hard… _science_."

"Zoi, I can't say I put a lot of stock into science considering that we can shoot lightning from our fingertips." Jadeite snickered disapprovingly, "Add to that the fact that we're standing here, breathing and alive after we've both died. Twice."

They both stopped breathing. The alley and the courtyard beyond became bone-chillingly still. Twin sets of memories emerged from a dark corner of the Shitennou's collective consciousness; memories of death. They both shuddered where they stood.

"What the hell?" Jadeite stammered.

"Don't look at it." Zoisite cringed and forced the living visions of swords, fire, and blood out of his mind.

"Zoi…" Jadeite gasped dry-mouthed, "What did we…"

"Concentrate on the Shinigami, Jed." Zoisite spoke commandingly.

"R- right." Jadeite stuttered again and shook the deadly phantasm away. He would return to the thought later, he mused. There would be no escaping it now.

Where had it come from?

"Are you ready?" Zoisite asked, his eyes trained on the Shinigami's courtyard.

"Don't get me killed." He replied with a smirking frown.

"Just trust me, Jed." Zoisite pleaded. The look in his eyes was one of baseless surety.

"I always have." Jadeite realized.

He hesitated for a moment, fighting his body's instinctive urge to remain out of harm's way, and then put one foot in front of the other. He emerged in the courtyard again and retraced his previous steps. When he came to the point at which the first shot struck him he turned around and received a nod from Zoisite to proceed. He took another step forward and heard the same mechanical click as before.

"Fuck."

He spun around as he had before, this time in the opposite direction. A bullet, or whatever it was, whizzed past his left ear. He stumbled backwards and righted himself as he heard the click again and a second bullet streaked towards his abdomen. He scuttled out of the way, but the bullet nicked one of his lower ribs. He let out a pained howl and clutched his side. Another click preceded a third shot which struck him in the back of the left knee. He toppled over and instinctively rolled into a fetal ball to protect himself. A fourth click.

He resigned himself that he was going to die in this courtyard. It was probably Zoisite's plan all along to die out in this savaged world. He was just giving Jadeite the opportunity to go first. Fake wounds be damned. Zoisite's trickery of the mind was legendary. He probably was bleeding all over the place from that first wound and he would expire from the subsequent shots that were riddling him as he lay there, pathetic and dying. A sudden jolt of adrenaline shot through him and he pushed himself off the ground with one arm and dodged a bullet that smacked a six-inch wide hole in the concrete where his head was just laying.

He heard that damnable click again and braced himself. At least he would die on his feet like a man, not cowering like a child. Not at the mercy of a madman with a gun. Not at the hands of the woman he loved.

_Rei…_

"Jadeite, get down!" Zoisite screamed at him from across the courtyard.

He almost didn't hear him at all. The name throbbed across his mind like a sexual climax. It was her! How could he ever have forgotten?

"JADEITE!"

He finally heard Zoisite's shrill voice and dropped to his knees as another bullet struck him in the throat. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Zoisite bounding across the courtyard. Clutched under his arm was one of the box-shaped bombs that Tomoe and his associates used to thin the numbers of Sufferers that shambled too close to their sanctuary. He switched on the LCD timer which counted down from seven seconds and he tossed it near the base of the sculpture in the center of the courtyard. Zoisite stumbled to the ground and crawled over to where Jadeite lay and sprawled himself out on top of him.

"Rei!" Jadeite called out. He was oblivious to the world and rapt in supreme splendor at the sound of the name sliding off his tongue.

Zoisite wrapped his arms around Jadeite's head just as Tomoe's bomb exploded in a vengeful howl of fire and fury. His back was exposed and he felt the flames singe his patchwork overcoat as stone and debris pelted him from above. Jadeite was gloriously oblivious to it all. The look on his face read utter bliss. Zoisite heard a series of mechanical clicks, blips, and the unmistakable sound of arcing electricity and hazarded a look over his shoulder as the dust from the explosion settled.

The fountain, or whatever it was, in the center of the courtyard had been blown apart by Tomoe's explosives. The machine that was hidden beneath its innocuous exterior had been disabled and the crippling gunshots had ceased.

"Jadeite." Zoisite coughed through the dust, "Jadeite, get up."

Jadeite was slow to respond. He looked around as though he was seeing the courtyard for the first time and slowly rose to a sitting position. The machine in the fountain was a sputtering mass of wire, metal, and circuitry now. He shook the orgasmic thought of the mysterious woman, Rei, out of his mind for the moment and focused.

"What is it?" he wondered aloud.

"I'm not sure." Zoisite confessed, "The Shinigami, I presume."

"A machine?" Jadeite balked.

"What else could think and move so fast?" Zoisite asked the obvious question.

"But it never moved." Jadeite observed, "And the bullets were coming from impossible angles."

"I don't think there were any bullets at all." Zoisite surmised and motioned to several antenna-like protrusions that lay charred on the ground, "I think it was all in our heads."

"What is this?" Jadeite became angry at the notion of being riled by a machine, "Some sort of mind-control device?"

"It could be some sort of hypnotic suggestion." Zoisite hypothesized, "Tuned to act on a certain high-frequency spectrum or something like that."

"So this whole time Tomoe and his refugees were being held prisoner by a machine?" Jadeite almost laughed.

"There's another possibility." Zoisite offered, "This machine may not have been imprisoning them, so to speak."

Jadeite thought a moment and finished the assumption, "You think it might have been keeping them here intentionally for some other reason?"

"Maybe it was trying to keep them away from something more dangerous." Zoisite concluded.

"Tomoe said that beyond this courtyard there was a road that led straight to the Crystal Tower." Jadeite remembered, "Why would anyone want to block refugees from the one safe place in the city?"

"It might not be that safe anymore." Zoisite said gravely.

"I think it's time we saw this Crystal Tower for ourselves." Jadeite concluded and Zoisite concurred with a nod.

They brushed themselves off of dust and debris and gave a final, worrisome glance at the disabled Shinigami and walked to the other side of the courtyard. Rubble was strewn across their path as they followed the brick-flanked road out. The road climbed upward and the buildings climbed along with it and obscured everything but the grumbling gray sky from view. At the crest of the hill the road curved sharply to the left and ended at an abrupt drop-off.

The sight was breathtaking in the most loathsome sense of the word. The road terminated at a crater the size of a small city. There _should_ have been a small city there, the suburbs of Tokyo itself. Craters dotted the landscape as far as the eye could see. No rubble was left behind; just empty, black holes where millions of people should have been happily going about their lives. For miles around there was simply _nothing_.

However, far off in the distance almost in the exact center of the ring of destruction stood a towering, silver spire. The shining peak of the crystalline structure still managed to give off a faint sparkle in the dreary overcast that shrouded the world. The Crystal Tower stood untouched by the destruction that ravaged the city. Just the sight of the majestic structure sparked hope in the hearts of the two Shitennou who stood on the edge of the devastation.

"We'll have to skirt the edges of the craters." Zoisite planned for the journey, "The walls are too steep to climb."

"What about Tomoe and the refugees?" Jadeite asked.

"They're safer where they are, I think." Zoisite considered the difficult crossing that the two of them would face, let alone accompanied by hundreds of starving refugees.

"My god, Zoisite." Jadeite spoke in fearful awe of the pockmarked landscape, "What could have done this?"

"We could have." Zoisite spoke heavily and turned his gaze to meet Jadeite's.

"Are you starting to remember, too?" Jadeite asked. Zoisite only had to nod.

A shadow fell over them despite the lack of a sun above them. The accompanying silence was dreadful and a static energy began to build up around them as Jadeite and Zoisite spun around and looked up into the sky.

A titanic vessel hovered just a hundred feet above them. Great obsidian spikes jutted out from the center of the ship and crackled with fearsome green arcs of stray energy. The silence was replaced by a low, buzzing drone and the shadow disappeared in a blinding flash of twin searchlights falling directly on the Shitennou. The massive hovering vessel let out a low, moaning wail of a klaxon and Jadeite felt himself rising into the air.

"What the hell?" he heard Zoisite shout from beside him.

"I can't break free!" Jadeite shouted, panicked.

Zoisite raised a hand above his head and his palm began to glow with a pale blue light.

"Zoi, don't!" Jadeite shouted, "The Sufferers! You'll lead them straight to Tomoe's refuge!"

Zoisite couldn't hear his companion over the steadily growing roar of the crystal ship. His deadly, dart-like sakura flew freely from his flared palm towards the source of the light that was lifting them off the ground. The sakura seemed to be swallowed up by the light and Zoisite's defiance was answered by an arc of black lightning which cracked thunderously in Jadeite's ears and rendered his companion limp and unconscious in a second.

He rose further and further to the point that the craters began to look like potholes and the Crystal Tower merely resembled a small chunk of quartz. He felt the strength leave his muscles as he was pulled inside the ship. His consciousness faded rapidly and the last thing he recalled before he passed out was something he never expected to see. Above him amidst the amber glow of the alien lights there was a familiar insignia: that of the crescent moon. He recalled its shape from some deep memory buried within him, only where he remembered a crescent of gold pointing upwards to the heavens this warlike symbol was black and may have pointed towards hell itself.


End file.
